Boston Bombing Reminder That Liberty Carries A Price

Terrorism: Regardless of whether the terrorist culprits behind the Boston Marathon bombing are foreign or domestic, the carnage has already given Americans an important reminder: Freedom is always a target.

It will be days, perhaps weeks, before we know for sure who committed the first successful terrorist bombing in the 11 and a half years since September 11th, 2001.

On a number of levels, the details are chilling. At least three were killed near the finish line of the world-famous Boston Marathon, including an 8-year-old boy watching his father compete.

Over 170 were injured, including the boy's mother and sister, with numerous victims' limbs severed.

On top of the obvious intentional grisliness are the facts that pressure cookers were apparently used, with gunpowder or the like as explosive, and ball bearings as shrapnel — the latter well known to Israeli suicide bomber victims.

Such do-it-yourself bomb-making does not require the evil genius of a Ph.D. gone bad, like Theodore Kaczynski; little is needed beyond access to the Internet and a trip to the hardware store.

It's shocking, yes. But not surprising.

The most insightful observation may have come from someone as close to 9/11 as anyone, former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. The morning after the Boston attack, he told CBS, "It's surprising there haven't been more of these since Sept. 11th."

Giuliani reminded a lulled public what many have forgotten: "We expected many attacks like this."

If Boston is found to be the work of al-Qaida-linked Islamist terrorists, there will be charges that it was the result of President Obama having "returned to the failed law enforcement mentality of the 1990s, where we read terrorists their Miranda rights instead of questioning them to stop attacks," as Marc Thiessen charges in his book "Courting Disaster." Its subtitle: "How Barack Obama is inviting the next attack."

It will bring into question Obama's drone program, in which we kill terrorists without getting our hands dirty, instead of treating them as valuable sources of information that can be gleaned by capture and tough interrogation, information to prevent future attacks.

But whoever is responsible for the terror at the marathon, even if it turns out to be another domestic mass murderer with political motives, like the Unabomber, Americans must remember that ordered liberty will always have its enemies, inside and outside.

Those enemies wish to foment a bloody chaos as they weaken our national will to continue to secure the blessings of liberty for our posterity.

The British not only withstood the daily hell from above launched by Hitler; the mourning of Lady Thatcher is a reminder that in the 1970s and 1980s they "stayed calm and carried on" in spite of dozens of terrorist acts — in train stations, buses, department stores and restaurants — from an enemy within.

Giuliani is right. What is amazing is that "there haven't been more of these since September 11th."

Sadly, Boston may be the beginning of our way of life being attacked — here at home — more often.

Terrorism: Regardless of whether the terrorist culprits behind the Boston Marathon bombing are foreign or domestic, the carnage has already given Americans an important reminder: Freedom is always a target.

It will be days, perhaps weeks, before we know for sure who committed the first successful terrorist bombing in the 11 and a half years since September 11th, 2001.

On a number of levels, the details are chilling. At least three were killed near the finish line of the world-famous Boston Marathon, including an 8-year-old boy watching his father compete.

Over 170 were injured, including the boy's mother and sister, with numerous victims' limbs severed.

On top of the obvious intentional grisliness are the facts that pressure cookers were apparently used, with gunpowder or the like as explosive, and ball bearings as shrapnel — the latter well known to Israeli suicide bomber victims.

Such do-it-yourself bomb-making does not require the evil genius of a Ph.D. gone bad, like Theodore Kaczynski; little is needed beyond access to the Internet and a trip to the hardware store.

It's shocking, yes. But not surprising.

The most insightful observation may have come from someone as close to 9/11 as anyone, former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. The morning after the Boston attack, he told CBS, "It's surprising there haven't been more of these since Sept. 11th."

Giuliani reminded a lulled public what many have forgotten: "We expected many attacks like this."

If Boston is found to be the work of al-Qaida-linked Islamist terrorists, there will be charges that it was the result of President Obama having "returned to the failed law enforcement mentality of the 1990s, where we read terrorists their Miranda rights instead of questioning them to stop attacks," as Marc Thiessen charges in his book "Courting Disaster." Its subtitle: "How Barack Obama is inviting the next attack."

It will bring into question Obama's drone program, in which we kill terrorists without getting our hands dirty, instead of treating them as valuable sources of information that can be gleaned by capture and tough interrogation, information to prevent future attacks.

But whoever is responsible for the terror at the marathon, even if it turns out to be another domestic mass murderer with political motives, like the Unabomber, Americans must remember that ordered liberty will always have its enemies, inside and outside.

Those enemies wish to foment a bloody chaos as they weaken our national will to continue to secure the blessings of liberty for our posterity.

The British not only withstood the daily hell from above launched by Hitler; the mourning of Lady Thatcher is a reminder that in the 1970s and 1980s they "stayed calm and carried on" in spite of dozens of terrorist acts — in train stations, buses, department stores and restaurants — from an enemy within.

Giuliani is right. What is amazing is that "there haven't been more of these since September 11th."

Sadly, Boston may be the beginning of our way of life being attacked — here at home — more often.

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